A Chicago student is at the centre of a censorship storm after a now famous image he created of US President Barack Obama as the Joker from The Dark Knight was removed from Flickr.

The removal comes two months after the popular photo-sharing site deleted the account of Shepherd Johnson, on which he had 1200 photos.

It is believed he was banned because he left comments on the official White House Flickr page criticising the Obama Administration’s decision to withold detainee torture photos and published a photo of a bleeding detainee on the site.

The Los Angeles Times revealed this week that the man behind the Obama-Joker image, which has spread virally online and been plastered across US streets by ultra-conservative groups, was history student Firas Alkhateeb.

The image has been the subject of much debate in the US, with some commentators dubbing it “an act of cultural terrorism”.